Villages with crime hot spots are a priority for policing in Cambridgeshire due to a lack of resources, says a chief inspector for South Cambridgeshire.

Chief Inspector James Sutherland believes that it is more productive to focus on crime hot spots than rural villages because it is "difficult to predict".

Speaking at a South Cambridgeshire Police panel meeting in Orchard Park, Cambridge, on Wednesday, the panel was asked by a resident to help patrol a particular village that recently had a spate of burglaries.

CI Sutherland said: "I have asked PCSOs to zero in on the hottest streets of crime. The amount of time they can spend in a wider area is less. I'm not blind to the problems that villages have...

"But what we tend to have is short spates of crime in villages, but it won't immediately repeat. Most of the criminals who are stealing things in South Cambs do not live in South Cambs, they will drive to the area and commit crime.

"The difficulty is trying to predict where that crime is going to happen next - and it's the pauses that cause difficulty.

"In a city, burglars commit crime on foot and near to where they live, which makes their actions predictable. The typical policing response is getting to that area and find them."

CI Sutherland said that if the police force pushed resources into a rural village with a spate of crime over a 24-hour period, the chances of getting another offence within days or weeks is "very low".

This is because the criminals move onto another village, which puts the police at risk of having to "chase crime" and not get into the right places.